By James Bond, Chief Technologist, HP Enterprise Services, U.S. Public Sector

Adopting Cloud computing profoundly affects the methods, costs, and risks associated with delivering IT services to your end-consumers. The days of huge IT departments and budgets are gone, in both private and public sector, so unless your organization is in the business of providing IT, you are better off re-focussing resources on your core business and away from a large IT department. Cloud computing can deliver the technology you need, more effectively, and at a lower cost. With the transition to cloud, however, comes the CIO’s management challenge to be responsive to mission needs while managing the inherent risk.

In its recent Magic Quadrant for Communications Outsourcing and Professional Services, Gartner states that “Very few COPS providers are able to meet all customer requirements, across all countries and geographies, by leveraging internal resources for IT service delivery.” And with the challenges in today’s workplace, it’s no surprise that the above statement is a hot topic of discussion among corporate IT departments and popular technology forums. The “new normal” of doing business globally requires better collaboration among workers and partners in different geographies, business units and even companies.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) proved to be especially helpful for the airlines after their IT spend was cut by over 8% in 2009. Airlines are just now beginning to shift from cost cutting to business growth. Read how airlines can use cloud computing as a natural progression to this business shift to create new and unique revenue streams.

As part of our HP Converged Cloud Services for Airlines announcement, HP is highlighting our HP Passenger Service Solution (HP PSS)—an airline industry solution that focuses on the merchandising, reservation, and travel processes for an airline. HP PSS provides our airline clients with all the basic functionality they need to support the reservation and travel processes used to service their passengers, as well as several other benefits.